


Unter einer Decke Stecken

by Amanuensis



Category: Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-16
Updated: 2010-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-13 18:15:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amanuensis/pseuds/Amanuensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fated_addiction requested: "Archie Hicox/Bridget von Hammersmark...He was a film critic, she was an actress. Were they old friends? Or was it just a chance encounter? What might've happened had they survived?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unter einer Decke Stecken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fated_addiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/gifts).



> The title is the German idiom for "in cahoots," but literally translates as "stuck under a blanket."  
> Thanks to the best betas in the world.

His understanding is that they won't meet until that tavern date. But the plan changes: Bridget von Hammersmark wants to meet him, just him, before she'll agree to the public contact.

Archie tells himself she'll be disappointing in real life. That no actress ever measures up to the glamour she presents on the screen; he has a fair bit of experience with that truth. He knows the skills of a camera, how black and white transforms glances and gazes and long soul-searching looks that rise from the most ordinary, the most human of faces. All light and trickery.

So when Bridget von Hammersmark enters the room he knows that's true; the camera is what has always awarded her the luminescence about her face, the softness that balances the brilliance of red lipstick on a woman's mouth. That beauty mark on her face? On screen, yes, it's a beauty mark, but here on the living breathing woman it's just a mole. She's only flesh. Only human.

And it's glorious.

There's fine blonde hair under her chin and he's never wanted to touch anything more. Her lipsticked mouth smiles so much wider than she allows it to on the screen, and her teeth shine wet, not just white. A fleck of that lipstick mars the corner of her mouth, just a bit askew. She smells of the French cigarettes she favors and some perfume he hasn't a hope of naming, something that smells like the scent you breathe at the crook of a woman's elbow. She's not the celluloid goddess he's loved from the safety of a dark theatre seat; here she's imperfect, here she's sweating, here she stands with her weight shifted on one foot as she examines him, examines what they've sent her. Archie dives so hard and so deep into love for her that he can't breathe for a moment.

Von Hammersmark--it will be easier if he forces himself to think of her that way, he tells himself; she's his contact, she's his fellow agent on a mission--manages to be both businesslike and charming; charm is her business, of course, and it makes Archie wonder again how many others in her profession might also be agents. On either side.

"You and I will not speak a word to each other in anything except German, naturally," are her first words to him, spoken in that language. She smiles as she says it, smiles all through what she says next: "If I have the least little doubt about your ability to do this, well, that's not good for the mission, is it? And that would be too much of a risk. For the mission and for me. I simply won't take such a risk." Her hand curls over his forearm and squeezes it in a remarkable imitation of affection, and Archie has to resist the urge to seize that hand and press it to his lips. "So, German only, darling, yes?"

He knows he needs to speak here, so he swallows back the bubble of _I'd give my life to protect your least little finger_ that is threatening to spill from his mouth, and instead answers, forcing his own gallant smile, "Of course. What else should a German captain speak? Especially one who is an old friend of Bridget von Hammersmark, the beauty and pride of the Fatherland." He wanted stronger words of praise than those, but the superlatives that could properly immortalize this woman haven't been invented, in German or in English.

Von Hammersmark tilts her head. "Very prettily said, darling, thank you. Your accent..." The smile doesn't leave her face, but it recedes from her eyes, and he knows he's seeing her as close to worried as she will allow anyone to see. "Well, there's no disguising you've the origins of a country bumpkin. An officer of your rank would probably have been at pains to change that early on in his career, to avoid being teased by his fellows. That might be a difficulty."

The tilt of her head changes. "On the other hand..." she says. Archie almost opens his mouth, but realizes this is not the moment for him to make suggestions; von Hammersmark is in the position of expertise here, and that makes her as good as his commanding officer. "On the other hand, hometown pride is an admirable trait, according to the right propaganda. You might be one of those boys who clung to his origins, terribly pig-headed and proud, and won the sympathies of all your other humble-origined superiors. The ones who all like to pretend they suckled the very paving stones of Berlin from their cradles, but in truth smelled of their farm sheep in some valley backwater until they were seventeen. Yes, I suppose that will have to do."

She lifts her hand from his arm and touches his cheek with her fingertips; he thinks to himself that it must be a gesture she's made a hundred times a day, dazzling the hundreds of men who are smitten with the divine Bridget von Hammersmark. He tells himself this so that he has a chance of actually hearing what she's saying over the pulse surging in his head. "I think," she says, "we will do best if you say as little as possible, all the same. You will be my taciturn friend, I think." The smile returns to her eyes. "The one I need to grin at and tease as much as possible, so that I may entice even a little smile from him as we sit and share a drink, much less a few words. You can do that for me, can't you, my dear friend?"

And even if she wanted him to speak another long string of words as a test--she doesn't, of course, she wants to know he understands the question and can shut up-- it would be impossible for him, with her hand on his cheek, to do anything but nod his head the smallest bit he can so as not to dislodge her hand, and murmur only, "Yes."

*****

He thought it was a reasonable request for them to meet the once, enough for Bridget von Hammersmark to be sure his capabilities are worth risking her blonde traitor's neck upon. So he's surprised to hear she wants another meeting. Has something changed? Has she new information that can't wait?

Neither, it seems. No new intelligence; she doesn't expect to have the guest list or the location until the day before, that's why the public meeting is to be scheduled so late. No, it turns out she wants to talk more about him. Not, as he expects, the careful history of the backwater German captain they've constructed, but of Lieutenant Archie Hicox.

He tells it. In German. He dwells very little on statistics and facts: mother, father, education, enlistment, service. None of it extraordinary. What he warms to in this unexpected narrative, of course, is when he begins to talk of her--not directly about her, not at first, but about film, his heart's mistress, who has had to lie neglected since king and country required him to set her aside. Von Hammersmark laughs when she learns he's barely seen a film, much less one made by the Reich, in three years.

"But you've missed my best work," she teases. "You did not see my performance as Brünnhilde last year, then. I was splendid, if I do say so myself."

"You were exquisite as Joan of Arc," he amends, feeling such a release of pressure that he can compliment her as she deserves, though still without the words he wants. "That last scene in the court, as you sank to the floor. There wasn't a dry eye in the theatre."

She makes a dismissive noise. "They didn't even film the burning. I wanted that so much! Really, the director was such a coward. I couldn't argue with him, though, I was only nineteen and too much of a coward myself to stand up to the man."

"But you got your immolation at last as Brünnhilde, didn't you?"

She laughs, a chastened laugh that forgives him. "I suppose I might not have got that role if I'd physically gone up in flames as Joan, would I have. Too much repetition. You may be right." She stubs out her cigarette. "And at least Joan is a role I can credit for my kind reception here in France."

"After this," Archie says, "they'll have even greater cause. But I think I'll still love you best for Joan." Did he say that? Did he, Archie Hicox, actually have the nerve to say that to this divinity seated next to him?

And she gives him that smile again, the one that reaches her eyes. "Will you, Lieutenant Hicox? I think that's terribly lovely of you." She covers his hand with hers, and leaves it there. Her eyes don't leave his.

He knows, then, why she wanted to see him again. He's familiar with it, the air-starved loneliness of the deep cover agent, given a chance to breathe in the presence of a fellow operative. Anything he does from this moment that serves himself would be taking advantage of her, unfairly.

He does it anyway, helpless to stop himself. "Shall we arrange one more meeting before the public contact? Just to be sure."

"Perhaps. But I think I am already sure of you," she says, and Archie knows she's not talking about his accent.

*****

Nevertheless he does call her, two days later, to propose a last meeting the night before the tavern contact is scheduled. In truth it's nothing to do with the mission and he's quite sure she knows what he's asking for.

She does. "I think it's too much of a risk. I'm not supposed to have seen my old friends for a long time. That's the story. I can hardly have met you at a hotel the night before. Someone might see."

"I've thought of that," he says. "I thought it might add a level of credibility to our cover if something does go wrong tomorrow." She doesn't laugh off his fears, or say _But nothing will go wrong._ This close to the date even she doesn't try for levity. "If there is any awkwardness, if anyone does think there's something odd about our meeting, they might believe it's because the two of us were alone at a hotel the night before, hoping no one would put two and two together..."

Perhaps it's the way he delivers the German idiom for that particular phrase without any falter that decides her; he can't be sure. "Ah. So what we are hiding is something to make us both blush, possibly earn an officer discipline, but nothing that would have us end in front of a firing squad, that's the idea?" Perhaps, like him, she's glad of the pretense. Perhaps she wants to be done with pretense. "Well, by the time it comes to interrogating a hotel clerk to see if our story checks out, the shooting will probably already have begun. Why not. I'll arrive an hour after you."

And when she does and they're alone in that tiny cigar box of a hotel room, there's little talk. There's Bridget von Hammersmark and the way she undresses, from heels to stocking garters to skirt zip to neck scarf and suddenly he understands he wasn't wrong to have feared the flesh-and-blood woman. But the riskiest performance of both their lives is one day away, and all his fear of her, of what she'll think of him, gets swallowed back and he threads his hands through her blonde hair, kisses her mouth, kisses her breasts, kisses that crook of her elbow at last. Between kisses she undresses him, in a way he can only think of as _handily_ , and if once upon a time he thought he preferred a bit of shyness in a girl, well, that's over, now and forever. There's only Bridget and her perfect fingers, her mouth, the silken planes of her flanks and the dark gold fleece to which she invites his fingers and mouth.

His hands circle the taper of her waist when he finally bears her back on the bed; the clasp of her hands on his shoulder, his hip is still not as sweet an invitation as that in her eyes, and as they couple at last, he remembers, clear as newsprint, the words he'd once written about her: _with a single look, she can convey what it would take ten lesser actresses a soliloquy, two camera dissolves, and a lengthy montage to communicate._

Spent, he savors the soft weight of her for long minutes before thinking of her cigarettes. She accepts the one he delivers to her fingers, waits for him to light it, takes several slow draws upon it before any words are spoken.

"Just now," she murmurs, "you spoke in English."

 _What are you--_ Archie's about to protest, and then he freezes, right there next to her satin warmth. What had he groaned aloud, right there at the brink-- _God_? _Yes_? _Fuck_? Perhaps all of those. Whatever it was, it hadn't been in German and she'd heard it. Had she expected it? She couldn't--this wasn't--she wouldn't have taken him to bed just to test him, would she have?

Bridget only tucks herself further into his side, leaves the cigarette to smoulder on the side table, and chuckles, "Well. As long as you aren't making love to anyone but me on this mission, we should be fine. Shouldn't we, darling."

It hadn't been a test, no. His heart starts up again, the ice around it thawing in one flushed wave. _If you ask, I'll never make love to anyone but you again,_ he doesn't say. He doesn't quite have the nerve.

*****

This brief blaze of a love affair has its end a day later, in a basement tavern in tiny Nadine, with the death of one of the lovers. A day after that Hans Landa removes the other half of the pair. That is one version.

To imagine any other requires one to add a number of miscalculations to a situation that is already full of them. Major Hellstrom has already made his mistake in trying to corner four armed Allied spies by himself with only one pistol, and that costs him his life and spares the life of the actress. If his bullets could similarly miss a vital spot in Lieutenant Hicox's body, is that too much to imagine, that both might have survived the massacre in the tavern? They will have time for accusation and apology, for regret and relief, and perhaps for promises, when all is done. Not too much, possibly, to imagine.

But to grant them the time to fulfill those promises requires the next mistake to be made by Hans Landa. And perhaps that's too much to ask.


End file.
